This piece from Salon has been in my “must get to” pile for a several weeks, though it dates from March ‘07. It has been gnawing on my brain.
I have talked to more than 20 female veterans of the Iraq war in the past few months, interviewing them for up to 10 hours each for a book I am writing on the topic, and every one of them said the danger of rape by other soldiers is so widely recognized in Iraq that their officers routinely told them not to go to the latrines or showers without another woman for protection.
….
Spc. Mickiela Montoya, 21, who was in Iraq with the National Guard in 2005, took to carrying a knife with her at all times. “The knife wasn’t for the Iraqis,” she told me. “It was for the guys on my own side.”
….
Yet, despite the equal risks women are taking, they are still being treated as inferior soldiers and sex toys by many of their male colleagues. As Pickett told me, “It’s like sending three women to live in a frat house.”
Nothing new, sadly.
A 2003 survey of female veterans from Vietnam through the first Gulf War found that 30 percent said they were raped in the military. A 2004 study of veterans from Vietnam and all the wars since, who were seeking help for post-traumatic stress disorder, found that 71 percent of the women said they were sexually assaulted or raped while in the military. And in a third study, conducted in 1992-93 with female veterans of the Gulf War and earlier wars, 90 percent said they had been sexually harassed in the military, which means anything from being pressured for sex to being relentlessly teased and stared at.
This bit really gets me:
Spranger and several other women told me the military climate is so severe on whistle-blowers that even they regarded the women who reported rape as incapable traitors. You have to handle it on your own and shut up, is how they saw it.
A quick Google search… well, almost makes me cry.
Hoyden about Town has a post on the topic.
No Fish No Nuts has a rundown of several military rape cases. Based on that research I calculated a quick “here is what rape is worth” list according to the military.
- Rape a man and you 12.5 years per man.
- Rape a woman and you get 1.19 years per woman.
- Children fair better than women but not as well as men. Rape a kid and get 7.5 years per child.
- Teenage girls though… well, they are sluts anyway right? And oh so sexy hot. They’ll only get you 30 days.
And this isn’t even taking into account things like parole and the number of counts of rape per victim.
So why is this eating me alive, other than the obvious?
I think, it is this: these are the people crying ‘honor’ and ‘integrity’. These are the people nominally charged with protecting our freedom– life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Yet that noble sentiment isn’t even upheld internally? The protectors of freedom trample their own? I can’t think of much that is more sad.